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women in combat

Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly chatted with “Infowars” host Alex Jones on Monday, where the two discussed the Pentagon’s decision last year to lift the military ban on women serving in combat positions.

Schlafly raised her concerns about the lifting of the ban after Jones worried that the military might be used as a “domestic force” to “go after the Tea Party,” telling the fringe conspiracy theorist: “I don’t have any respect for the military who send women into combat.”

After Jones suggested that Reagan went silent on criticizing the “New World Order” after a failed assassination attempt against him, Schlafly conceded that “Reagan wasn’t perfect” — a blasphemous claim in certain right-wing circles — but still loved this country.

Unlike Obama!

“You’re saying, bottom line he was a good guy who loved this country,” Jones said. “That’s a big difference from Obama who obviously wants to destroy it.”

Schlafly agreed: “He obviously doesn’t love this country, he doesn’t want us to think we’re better than anybody else and of course we are.”

Earlier this year, Sandy Rios claimed that women in combat positions and the “homosexual takeover” of the military have destroyed the military’s effectiveness. Therefore it was no surprise when her Veterans Day guest Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy made a similar statement, arguing that gay and female service members have jeopardized the country’s security and the strength of the military. Gaffney also repeated the false claim that the military is now persecuting Christians and turning the practice of one’s faith into “a career-threatening activity.”

“God help us if we have to go to war again,” Gaffney told Rios, “especially if we invite war by this kind of behavior and weakness as we have in the past.”

The social engineering piece of what I think of as the Obama wrecking operation: you put in the effort to put homosexuals in the military and change the ethos of the institution in that way; you put women into combat and you change the ethos of the institution that way; you put every Christian in uniform on notice for the practice of their faith as possibly a career-threatening activity. You through all that into the mix on top of the other kinds of hallowing out — the lack of training, the lack of maintenance, the lack of modernization, the lack of research and development — and you really have I’m afraid put us in the position where we are breaking the only military we have. And God help us if we have to go to war again, and we will, especially if we invite war by this kind of behavior and weakness as we have in the past.

“The Obama administration has given affirmative action in the military a dose of steroids,” Selwyn Duke writes in order to reengineer the military into a force that is “more loyal to [Obama] than to the rule of law.”

What kind of leader wants a military more loyal to himself than to the rule of law?

And why?

These are two questions to ponder when considering the strange happenings in the armed forces since Barack Obama took office.

Let's start with a hypothetical. Let's say you were a hard-left-wing commander in chief who wanted the military firmly in your corner. You'd certainly note that our armed forces have been a bastion of conservatism and Christian faith, and you'd know that its members generally weren't very fond of you. So how would you go about changing this?

Some years ago I met a very young, all-American looking white fellow who had just exited the military. His reason was that he hadn't been advanced the way he believed he should have been, and he wasn't going to remain in the armed forces if it provided no future. Now, one interpretation here is that he was a millennial with an inflated opinion of himself (he didn't strike me that way, though). Yet there is another interpretation.

The Obama administration has given affirmative action in the military a dose of steroids, promoting minorities and women -- and, I believe, homosexuals and lesbians -- at the expense of white men. By the way, is this yet another reason why Obama wanted homosexuals to be able to serve openly? After all, you can't target them for special treatment if you don't know who they are.

But the point is this: if I were that hypothetical hard-left-wing leader, I'd know that one way to change the military's political climate is the same way you do it in the nation at large.

Demographic manipulation.

White men generally vote Republican, white military men even more so, and white military men who are practicing Christians, well, that's a recipe for a left-behind left. Minorities, women, atheists and the LGBT* crowd, however, are reliable liberal constituencies. So what would I do if I were that hard leftist?

I'd create a military climate friendly toward groups that are my constituencies and hostile toward those that aren't.

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Whatever your conclusions, there is of course a mundane explanation for all of this. Leftists truly believe in their insane diversity dogma and quite reflexively try to socially re-engineer whatever they can sink their claws into, be they universities, neighborhoods, businesses or even the entities charged with protecting their compassionate selves. And in this age of increasing corruption and decadence, it wouldn't be surprising to find generals transgressing against military code. Yet given that Barack Obama is a shadowy figure with a penchant for hiding his past (college records, etc.); that he has had avowed communists in his administration (Van Jones, Anita Dunn); that he seemed to belong to Chicago's socialist New Party in the 1990s; and that, according to former Occidental College acquaintance and ex-Marxist John Drew, Obama was a flat-out "Marxist Leninist" who believed in old-style communist revolution, well, one's imagination can conjure up some interesting scenarios.

Center for Military Readiness head Elaine Donnelly appeared on Sandy Rios In The Morning today to onceagain warn of the perils of allowing women in combat. She told the American Family Association radio host that the Obama administration’s plan to open combat roles to women service members is “like saying let’s take those cheerleaders and put them into the frontlines of the NFL and football games.”

Rios said that the problem all started with the “feminist influence” found in movies that made women think that they “can do it all.”

“We are watching movies, almost every action movie has a chick hero and she’s stronger than the men, and she’s able to kick and to move and to kill as lethally as they are,” Rios added. “It started maybe with Spider-Woman, I don’t know.”

She went on to recount her time in Israel talking to the country’s female soldiers who “were very proud of what they were able to do” on the frontlines.

Rios sidestepped the issue on whether Israel’s policy towards women in the military harmed its country’s security, unlike her AFA colleague Bryan Fischer who tackled it by falsely claiming that Israel bans women in combat.

Donnelly: In that environment, direct ground combat, women are at a severe disadvantage. They do not have an equal opportunity to survive or help fellow soldiers survive. To force women into that environment it’s like saying let’s take those cheerleaders and put them into the frontlines of the NFL and football games. Well we don’t even do that with the officials in the football games. To do that would be unfair, injuries would skyrocket and it certainly wouldn’t help that team win any games, and that’s non-lethal combat. So if we’re not going to do it in non-lethal combat in the NFL, why are we planning on doing this in lethal combat where national security is at risk?

Rios: You and I both know that our daughters and many women listening to you and me, women our age too, are products of feminist influence even if they don’t consider themselves a feminist. We are watching movies, almost every action movie has a chick hero and she’s stronger than the men, and she’s able to kick and to move and to kill as lethally as they are, with Catherine Zeta Jones and think of all the women who have played these roles. It started maybe with Spider-Woman, I don’t know. It’s like ‘women power’ and ‘we can do this.’ In fact I just was in Israel interviewing some of the females in the Israeli military and they were talking about their frontline experience and they were very proud of what they were able to do, so there’s this mood, this feeling, that women can do it all.

Just when we thought we were done hearing Nazi comparisons today, Pat Buchanan is now arguing that the new military policy opening up combat and special unit roles to women is so wrong that even the Nazis wouldn’t have considered it. In his column, “The Pentagon’s Surrender to Feminism,” Buchanan argues that “even the Third Reich in its dying hours did not send women into battle.”

He writes that putting women in combat positions “violate[s] common sense” and “thousands of years” of human civilization, even insisting that “the Pentagon’s salute to feminist ideology” will encourage rape and displace men. He also cites mass murderers and violent criminals to prove his point that “men are bigger, stronger [and] more aggressive” than women.

This decision to put women in combat represents a capitulation of the military brass, a surrender to the spirit of our age, the Pentagon’s salute to feminist ideology.

This is not a decision at which soldiers arrived when they studied after-action reports, but the product of an ideology that contradicts human nature, human experience and human history, and declares as dogma that women are just as good at soldiering as men.

But if this were true, rather than merely asserted, would it have taken mankind the thousands of years from Thermopylae to discover it?

In the history of civilization, men have fought the wars. In civilized societies, attacks on women have always been regarded as contemptible and cowardly. Even the Third Reich in its dying hours did not send women into battle, but old men and boys.

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Sending women into combat on equal terms seems also to violate common sense. When they reach maturity, men are bigger, stronger, more aggressive. Thus they commit many times the number of violent crimes and outnumber women in prisons 10 to 1.

For every Bonnie Parker, there are 10 Clyde Barrows.

Is it a coincidence that every massacre discussed in our gun debate – from the Texas Tower to the Long Island Railroad, from Columbine to Fort Hood, from Virginia Tech to Tucson, from Aurora to Newtown – was the work of a crazed male?

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Undeniably, some women might handle combat as well as some men. But that is true of some 13-, 14- and 15-year-old boys, and some 50- and 60-year old men. Yet we do not draft boys or men that age or send them into combat. Is this invidious discrimination based on age, or ageism?

Carry this feminist-egalitarian ideology to its logical conclusion, and half of those storming the Omaha and Utah beaches should have been girls and women. Is this not an absurdity?

We have had Navy ships become “love boats,” with female sailors returning pregnant. At the Naval Academy, three midshipmen, football players, allegedly raped an intoxicated classmate. For months, she was too ashamed and frightened to report it.

An estimated 26,000 personnel of the armed forces were sexually assaulted in 2011, up from 19,000 in 2010. Obama and the Congress are understandably outraged. Such assaults are appalling. But is not the practice of forcing young men and women together in close quarters a contributory factor here?

Among the primary reasons the Equal Rights Amendment, the ERA, went down to defeat three decades ago was the realization it could mean, in a future war, women could be drafted equally with men and sent in equal numbers into combat.

But what appalled the Reaganites is social progress in the age of Obama. This is another country from the one we grew up in.

On today’s 700 Club, Pat Robertson took issue with the military’s plan to allow women to begin training for the Navy SEALS and Army Rangers. After CBN reporter Lee Webb noted the failure of four women to pass the Marine’s training course in Quantico, Va., Robertson commented: “Well, I was trained at Quantico; I didn’t think it was all that demanding but I’m not a lady…. The SEAL team training is ungodly difficult, why would a woman want to go through that?” But Robertson knows who is to blame for women in combat training: feminists.

“The feminists are going to have their way,” Robertson lamented, while co-host Wendy Griffith warned that the sexual attractions between men and women could distract service members from their objective of protecting America.

Mike Huckabee hosted Family Research Council vice president Jerry Boykin today to discuss a report on the rise of sexual assault cases in the military between 2010 and 2012, which Boykin linked to the “sexualization of our military with social engineering” policies like the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

While Boykin correctly stated that “there are actually more men that have been sexually assaulted than women,” as we have noted, women represent a higher percentage of assault cases since there are only 200,000 women in the active-duty military.

He repeated the false claim that the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is linked to the number of assaults on men. However, CNN reports the 2012 rate “remained unchanged for active duty men” from 2010, the year before the law was repealed.

The two also tied the rise in assaults to the end on the ban on women in combat, a decision that was made in 2013 — before the study’s release — and hasn’t even been fully implemented.

Huckabee: General, there has been such a rash of sexual assault in the military and it’s become virtually epidemic. I wanted your assessment, do you think this has anything to do with the fact that we’ve so liberalized the policies of everything from women in combat, the whole conception of the separation of the gender, as well as saying we’re not going to have any restrictions on homosexuals in the military? Does that have anything at all to do with this?

Boykin: Well I think it has everything to do with it, Governor. We have seen, if I may use this term, a sexualization of our military with social engineering. One of the things that most of the people don’t realize is in a recent survey there are actually more men that have been sexually assaulted than women. We are trying to violate the laws of nature, failing to recognize that these young men and women are at the peak of their sex drive when we try to mix the genders for reasons that to me are illogical and in doing so what we are doing is we are inviting this kind of behavior, it’s not acceptable and it has to be punished and dealt with. But I think that this social engineering has manifested in a number of ways and this is certainly one of the clearest.

Frank Gaffney today made the case on Sandy Rios in the Morning that the increase in the sexual assault rate in the Armed Forces is President Obama’ fault because of his efforts to encourage women and gay people to serve.

After arguing that Obama has “savaged” the military with “vigor and lethality,” he linked Obama’s “sexual experimentation” and “social warfare against the military” to cases of sexual violence: “We’re hearing a lot about sexual assaults in the military and the like, it’s not to defend that by any means but it is to say if anybody is surprised that by putting more women and for that matter homosexuals into the military you are not going to get as a result that kind of unacceptable behavior is fatuous, it’s irresponsible, it’s malfeasance.”

The President came to office pledging fundamentally to transform the United States of America and I believe he has gone after every institution of our country, perhaps none with the vigor and lethality of the United States military. He has savaged the resources that it has relied upon to do the job we asked it to do to keep us safe, he has reduced both its numbers and its power projection capability and perhaps as troubling as anything I think he has done much to reduce its stature as a one of the most revered institutions in this country. We’re hearing a lot about sexual assaults in the military and the like, it’s not to defend that by any means but it is to say if anybody is surprised that by putting more women and for that matter homosexuals into the military you are not going to get as a result that kind of unacceptable behavior is fatuous, it’s irresponsible, it’s malfeasance, is what it’s amounts to. I’m afraid that the consequences of all of these steps, whether it’s the social experimentation or social warfare against the military or whether it’s hallowing it out through the budget and other means, the effect is we’re breaking the only military we have at a time when unfortunately we’re going to likely need them more than ever.

The Family Research Council's Jerry Boykin joined Tim Wildmon and Ed Vitagliano on today's radio broadcast to explain why he opposes the decision to allow female soldiers to serve in front-line combat, saying that allowing women to serve changes the dynamic of the unit because "God placed in us, as men, a protective nature when it comes to the female."

On top of that, these combat units will now have to deal with the issue of possible sexual attraction, which Boykin warned would become very complicated in times when there has been a loss of life and the soldiers become emotional and in need of solace and you can just "imagine what that can turn into in those conditions, in those circumstances, when you have mixed gender":

After losing his bid for a second term in Congress, despite a more favorable district, Allen West is continuing his work as a fulltime conservative blowhard (but without a taxpayer-funded salary). West is working at PJ Media and appeared yesterday on Washington Watch with Family Research Council leaders Tony Perkins and Jerry Boykin, where he criticized the lifting of the bans on women in combat and gays and lesbians in the military.

West told Boykin that “the liberal progressive left” is “coming at the military so viciously and vehemently because they want to tear down that ‘last bastion of strength, honor and moral fortitude,’ things that they really don’t understand,” lamenting that the generals haven’t stopped them.

The former congressman pointed to the election of Ashley Broadway, who is married to Army Lt. Col. Heather Mack, as Fort Bragg’s 2013 “Spouse of the Year” in a Military Spouse magazine poll. Broadway had previously been turned away from joining the base’s spouses club. West said Broadway’s story will undermine military’s resolve and strength.

He added that if he was an “enemy propagandist and I look at the lifting of this combat exclusion ban I’m going to turn that my benefit.”

West: The Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy and now this policy about lifting the exclusionary ban, people are starting to ask: what are the Generals in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps thinking about in not challenging to say, ‘this can’t be done.’

Boykin: I think your points are very well taken because I think one of the consequences of this will be a further erosion of the credibility of the General officer corps in the military and all services, as well an erosion of a confidence of the Americans in our military. You know the military has always been sort of the keepers of the keys of traditional American values and I think people are starting to question it and I think that’s what you were saying.

West: You are absolutely right and you know that from firsthand experience. I believe that is a reason why the liberal progressive left are coming at the military so viciously and vehemently because they want to tear down that ‘last bastion of strength, honor and moral fortitude,’ things that they really don’t understand. Look at just recently happened at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where the ‘Military Spouse of the Year’ for Fort Bragg, North Carolina is a lesbian partner to an Army Lt. Colonel or a Colonel. These are the type of things that are starting to happen which is going to question people’s resolve as far as, what are we doing to our military? Are we focused so much on winning social engineering points for special interest points or are we supposedly focused on what we should be doing which is going out there and fighting this very strong, very vicious, very determined radical Islamist enemy. If I’m an enemy propagandist and I look at the lifting of this combat exclusion ban I’m going to turn that my benefit and my messaging is going to be: the American men don’t want to fight us so they’re turning to their women.

Meanwhile, Perkins onceagain said that the “social engineering that has gone on in the military” and “tampering with the military environment” under President Obama “could very well lead to a draft.”

Perkins: What you have seen since you left the military but in particular under the four years of the Obama administration, I don’t think anybody could argue with the social engineering that has gone on in the military. My concern here in part is with all this tampering with the military environment that it’s going to have an effect—might be ten years until we see the total effect—it’s going to have an effect on retention, recruitment and this could very well lead to a draft once again because the volunteers are not going to be there in this environment which has been so damaged by these policies.

As we noted earlier today, the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer has claimed that both the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and the end of the ban on women serving in combat positions will deter so many volunteers that the military will be forced to reinstate the draft.

On Focal Point today, Fischer drew a direct line between “Big Gay” and women in combat. “Malicious” and “sinister” gay rights activists, he claims, are “trying to destroy the military,” which will ultimately mean “they’re going to have a tough time filling their ranks with qualified soldiers. So they’re going to have to go to the draft, and that means your daughters are going to be pulled into the draft and they could be sent into combat to die, whether they want to do it or not, because of Big Gay.”

As the Obama administration continues to be a complete nightmare for antifeminist activist Phyllis Schlafly, the Eagle Forum president is out with a new column attacking Defense Secretary Leon Panetta over his decision to end the ban on women in combat. She claims the policy shift is “lacking in common sense and it is toadying to the feminist officers who yearn to be 3- and 4-star generals based on the feminist dogma of gender interchangeability and on their desire to force men into situations to be commanded by feminists” and even makes a bogus analogy to the NFL.

Schlafly said that the rate of sexual assaults “will skyrocket” if the ban is removed and also attacked the “feminist ideology” for blaming men for such incidents: “Only men will be deemed at fault because it is feminist ideology that men are innately batterers and women are victims.”

In a newsworthy act of political cowardice, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta ran through the Pentagon’s exit door as he announced he is striking down the 1994 Combat Exclusion Law. His timing means his successor, presumably Chuck Hagel, will inherit the task of defending the order to assign women to front-line military combat.

Of course, Panetta doesn’t want to be grilled about his order. It’s lacking in common sense and it is toadying to the feminist officers who yearn to be 3- and 4-star generals based on the feminist dogma of gender interchangeability and on their desire to force men into situations to be commanded by feminists.

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Military women are already complaining about increased sexual assaults, and of course those problems will skyrocket. Only men will be deemed at fault because it is feminist ideology that men are innately batterers and women are victims. [emphasis added]

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How do you answer the fact that women do not have an equal opportunity to survive in combat situations, and did you consider the fact that women in the military get injured at least twice the rate of men? Please explain why the National Football League does not seek diversity or gender equality with female players.

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A lot of people have a very sanitized view of what battlefield fighting is all about. They seem to think it means a quick gunfight and then returning to the base with separate shower and toilet facilities and a ready mess hall.

The last few years have been tough on Elaine Donnelly, as the Phyllis Schlafly protégé appears to have lost the battle over her group’s two main priorities: maintaining the ban on openly gay service members and excluding women from combat positions. Donnelly, the head of the Center for Military Readiness, appeared on Secure Freedom Radio last week with Frank Gaffney to demand that Congress intervene and block the Obama administration from permitting women to serve in combat.

She predicted that “lives are lost” if women have the opportunity to serve in such units, which she arged would make the military’s mission “more difficult [and] more dangerous.” “This is the political agenda of the President,” Donnelly said, “we see the outgoing Secretary of Defense planting on the Pentagon the flag of feminism right next to the LGBT gay activist flag.”

Gaffney: What does it mean for the war fighting capabilities of the United States that we are relaxing the standards or we are enabling people who will not be able to meet them to get access to and become part of the military cadre?

Donnelly: When you complicate matters in infantry battalions you make life and missions there more difficult, more dangerous, bottom line: lives are lost. There is no excuse for doing this. We know that women are promoted at rates equal to or faster than men and it’s been that way for decades. This is the political agenda of the President that is being imposed on the one institution or the one organization that he can order as Commander-in-Chief and everybody has to salute and make it work. That includes the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, they are going along with this even though they have not disclosed the results of the marine tests. Now if the marine tests supported the goal of women being in the infantry, don’t you think we would’ve heard about it by now? Instead, we see the outgoing Secretary of Defense planting on the Pentagon the flag of feminism right next to the LGBT gay activist flag. These people are in charge of the Pentagon unless Congress intervenes and Congress has the responsibility to intervene. Under the Constitution, Congress makes policy, not the President, not the Joint Chiefs and certainly the field commanders who will have to implement these diversity metrics in order to get promoted.

On his radio program on Friday, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins added his voice to the Religious Right’s collective outrage over the Pentagon’s decision to allow women to serve in combat positions. The move, Perkins warned, will decrease morale and deter volunteers to the point that “we will have to reinstate the draft.”

I spoke with Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma earlier today about this. He is the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee and he is probably going to be joining me next week on the program. We talked about it and he says the Pentagon will – they don’t have to by law, they don’t have to get a congressional action – but they will be presenting their proposal to Congress. Congress could stop it. Now, I’m not very optimistic that Congress has the backbone to do anything about that. We’ve seen that before on ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’

We’re going to be tracking this very close because, again, this is a national security issue. I didn’t even get into the issue, don’t have time today, but with all of the social engineering that’s going on in our military, I do not think we’re far off from the very real possibility of having to reinstate the draft. Now think about that for a moment. Walk that out. We have to revert to the draft because all of the morale issues and what’s happening in the military, people are not volunteering to join, so we get into another major conflict, we have to reinstate the draft, and all of a sudden they’re drafting our daughters to serve in combat.

Perkins is not alone in his fears. The American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer also warned last week that the new policy would cause a “complete sexual meltdown” in the military and a subsequent reinstatement of the draft.

It may be of some comfort to Perkins and Fischer to note that their similarly dire predictions about the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell” – including Fischer’s prediction that “the draft will return with a vengeance and out of necessity” – have not come to pass. Not only has the draft not been reinstated, a study by a group of military school professors one year after the repeal of DADT found that the repeal “had no overall negative impact on military readiness or its component dimensions, including cohesion, recruitment, retention, assaults, harassment or morale.”

Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association is now recycling the exact same talking points against allowing women the opportunity to serve in combat that he used opposing the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT).

While Donnelly avoided Fischer’s question about reinstating the draft, she claimed that women will now have to register in the selective service system and said the policy will “harm women, men, infantry battalions and the national security of the United States.”

Donnelly said that sexual assaults may increase because male soldiers will resent the easier “double standards” for women, warning that now the whole military will “fall apart.”

Fischer: There’s also the issue of sexual tension and sexual misconduct, the potential for that is going to be introduced.

Donnelly: If you want to make that even worse than what we’re seeing now, and the rates keep going up and up it’s getting worse and worse, put women into direct combat units, adjust the standards to make it work and then just sit back and watch everything fall apart because double standards are so corrosive to morale. It increases resentment, resentment leads to sexual harassment, assaults or worse, this is a poisonous kind of atmosphere.

Later, Fischer warned of a “complete sexual meltdown” occurring due to “predatory women” trying to sleep with officers, citing CIA head David Petraeus’s affair with a reporter.

But a caller insisted that maybe the Obama administration decided to end prohibitions on women and openly gay service members so they can share foxholes together, an idea Fischer loved: “Just put your predatory females in the same foxhole with a flaming homosexual and nothing is going to happen.”

Fischer: I just think having women in uniform is just a bad idea and here we are seeing one of the reasons. You have got subordinates serving powerful supervisors, you’ve got predatory women, it’s just a recipe for complete sexual meltdown and that’s why we are seeing General Petreaus being a key example of that.

Let’s go to Lee, Bluefield, Virginia.

Caller: I’m gonna have to do something I thought I would never do. I am going to have to give President Obama credit for having a long-range strategy because I just realized why he wanted soldiers to be able to serve in the military and be openly gay, because when it comes time to share a foxhole he will put the openly gay soldiers in the foxhole with the women and that way they’ll both be safe.

Fischer: So Lee’s saying this is a brilliant strategy on the part of President Obama to eliminate sexual tension in the military. Just put your predatory females in the same foxhole with a flaming homosexual and nothing is going to happen. There won’t be any sexual misconduct. That’s President Obama thinking outside the box.

While the Religious Right reacted with apoplecticrage following the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the lifting of the ban on women in combat has brought dejected but relatively subdued responses from conservatives.

Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness said that “lives could be lost unnecessarily” by the new policy, which “will harm men and the mission of the infantry as a whole.” “The administration has a pattern of irresponsible actions like this using the military to advance a social agenda,” she said, “This kind of a social experiment is a dangerous one.”

Faith and Freedom Coalition head Ralph Reed maintained that the Obama administration is “putting women in combat situations is the latest in a series of moves where political correctness and liberal social policy have trumped sound military practice.”

Richard Viguerie’s group claimed that “Obama’s plan to introduce women into frontline combat roles in the U.S. military is a dangerous and irresponsible social experiment, not an opportunity for women to serve their country and advance in their chosen profession.”

Radio talk show host Janet Mefferd on her Facebook page wrote that the move is further proof that the Obama administration is “intent upon undoing this great country” and will “stop at nothing to achieve it.”

Family Research Council vice president Jerry Boykin, who was reprimanded by President Bush after he made anti-Muslim and political speeches while in uniform, called the decision “another social experiment”:

The people making this decision are doing so as part of another social experiment, and they have never lived nor fought with an infantry or Special Forces unit. These units have the mission of closing with and destroying the enemy, sometimes in close hand-to-hand combat. They are often in sustained operations for extended periods, during which they have no base of operations nor facilities. Their living conditions are primal in many situations with no privacy for personal hygiene or normal functions. Commanders are burdened with a very heavy responsibility for succeeding in their mission and for protecting their troops.

This decision to integrate the genders in these units places additional and unnecessary burdens on leaders at all levels. While their focus must remain on winning the battles and protecting their troops, they will now have the distraction of having to provide some separation of the genders during fast moving and deadly situations. Is the social experiment worth placing this burden on small unit leaders? I think not.

Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America said that the “majority of women” don’t care about the ban or want its elimination:

News of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's intent to lift the long-standing ban on women serving in direct combat is further proof that this administration simply does not care about the issues about which the majority of women care. Once again, their interest on women issues is driven by special interest groups. The point of the military is to protect our country. Anything that distracts from that is detrimental. Our military cannot continue to choose social experimentation and political correctness over combat readiness. While this decision is not unexpected from this administration, it is still disappointing. Concerned Women for America (CWA) and its more than half-a-million members around the country will continue to do all we can to see that our men and women in uniform are governed with the respect and resources needed to do the hard task of fighting for and protecting our freedoms.

“God help us,” lamented Denny Burk of the Southern Baptist Convention, who seemed to suggest that women shouldn’t be in the armed forces at all:

Are the fortunes of women in our country really enhanced by sending them to be ground up in the discipline of a combat unit and possibly to be killed or maimed in war? Is there a father in America who would under any circumstance risk having his daughter shot or killed in battle? Is there a single husband in this country who thinks it okay for his wife to risk being captured by our enemies? To risk becoming a prisoner of war? Is this the kind of people we want to be? Perhaps this is the kind of people we already are. I would sooner cut off my arm than allow such a thing with my own wife and daughters. Why would I ever support allowing someone else’s to do the same? Why would anyone?

What kind of a society puts its women on the front lines to risk what only men should be called on to risk? In countries ravaged by war, we consider it a tragedy when the battle comes to the backyards of women and children. Why would we thrust our own wives and daughters into that horror? My own instinct is to keep them as far from it as possible. Perhaps this move makes sense with an all volunteer force, but what if the draft is ever reinstituted? Are we really going to be the kind of people who press our wives and daughters to fight in combat?

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Everyone in America ought to be scandalized by this news, but I’m wondering if it will even register on the radar of anyone’s conscience. To the extent that it doesn’t, we reveal just how far gone we are as a people. God help us.

Aaron Ahlert of FrontPageMag said the move is “sure to have deadly consequences” and represents the Obama administration “forcing gender radicalism down America’s throat.”

It didn’t take long for the Obama administration to advance a pernicious piece of its promised radical agenda. Two days after the president laid out his far-left vision during the inauguration, senior defense officials announced that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta will lift the military’s ban on women serving in combat. The move overturns a 1994 provision that prohibited them from being assigned to ground combat units. Panetta has given the various service branches until 2016 to come up with exemptions, and/or make any arguments about what roles should still reman closed to women. Thus, another bit of gender radicalism has been shoved down the nation’s throat through executive fiat — and this one is sure to have deadly consequences.

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It stretches the bounds of credulity to believe that sexual tension, regardless of the legitimate or illegitimate motivation behind it, would be lessened under front line, life-threatening combat conditions. Nor is it inconceivable to think that close personal relationships of a sexual nature would make some soldiers take the kind of unnecessary risks to save a lover that might not only endanger themselves, but their entire unit.

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Once again, elections have consequences. Barack Obama has made it clear that part of his progressive agenda includes forcing gender radicalism down America’s throat, absent any input from Congress. Once, the United States military was all about projecting lethal power around the globe to protect America’s interests. Now, it is all about promoting diversity, inclusion and equality of outcome, irrespective of military readiness and cohesion. For progressives, who have elevated political correctness above all else–national security included–such radical egalitarianism is cause for celebration. For Donnelly and countless other Americans, it is anything but. “No one’s injured son should have to die on the streets of a future Fallujah because the only soldier near enough to carry him to safety was a five-foot-two 110-pound woman,” she contends.

Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association today dedicated his radio show to railing against the American Civil Liberties Union for filing a lawsuit against the ban on women in combat. He got most heated in responding to the claims from ban opponents who point to Israel’s policy towards women, arguing that Israel actually excludes women from combat roles and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.

Don’t let people lie to you that the Israelis use women in combat, they do not. They tried it for three weeks in 1948, they scrapped it, it doesn’t work and they’ve never done it again. Now women still serve in the Israeli military, they serve as secretaries, clerks, communications specialists, nurses, teachers and army social workers. They do not serve in combat. They don’t serve as pilots, they don’t serve on ships, they don’t pump gas, they don’t even drive trucks. Now they do receive a minimal amount of weapons training but they receive no training in how to use weapons in combat and they don’t even practice shooting at combats. In fact the only time, and this is what perpetuates the myth, the only time that Israeli female soldiers carry weapons is on parade.

However, this is simply not the case.

“Women have served in combat roles in the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) since the mid-1990s,” the BBC reports. “During the 2006 Lebanon conflict, women fired artillery, served on warships, and piloted aircraft.”

Apparently Fischer doesn’t believe the IDF’s own website which clearly states that women in “some of the most combative, extreme roles” in the military.

Everywhere in the IDF, women play a vital role in all positions, both combat and administrative. In the Air Force, Navy, and Ground Forces- these women man some of the most combative, extreme roles in the IDF.

Today, over 90% of all IDF jobs are available for female soldiers, including a variety of elite positions. Over the last decade, IDF women completed pilot’s course, became naval officers and took on a variety of infantry positions.

The following women fight alongside men, contributing to the security of the State of Israel and proving their immense toughness

The IDF says women serve as weapons instructors, pilots in the air force and soldiers in combat, K-9, field intelligence and engineering units.

Truth in Action Ministries has released their “2012 Issues Guide for Christian Voters” [PDF], which argues that federal spending on social services “goes against what the Bible says about caring for one’s own and others” and pushing for bans on abortion rights, stem cell research and emergency contraception. The group also warns of “radical judges” and an “out-of-control judiciary,” the “dangerous and destructive” health care reform law and the “false religion” of environmentalism.

But of course, no Religious Right voter guide goes without a section on gay rights, and Truth in Action Ministries tells members that END will “impose the homosexual political agenda on the workplace” and that the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell has started “Maoist-style ‘re-education’ in ‘diversity.’” The group also claims the repeal law will “violate the rights of those serving by forcing them to cohabit and shower with people who may desire them sexually” and “jeopardize the military’s health and blood supply, since homosexual men are far more likely to be promiscuous and to have STDs, including HIV/AIDS”

In 1996, Congress overwhelmingly enacted the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). But in 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court struck down the state’s marriage law, and the state began issuing same-sex “marriage” licenses six months later, despite no change in the law. And in May 2012, a federal appeals court in Boston declared DOMA unconstitutional.

All candidates should be asked how they will defend marriage from this radical assault. It’s not enough to say they favor marriage if they also support same-sex “civil unions,” “domestic partnerships,” or “sexual orientation” laws, all of which incentivize homosexual relationships and devalue marriage. They should also be questioned about:

• The proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would impose the homosexual political agenda on the workplace;

• A constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union only of one man and one woman;

Servicemen and women put their lives on the line. They deserve policies that ensure maximum military readiness and the best chance to win wars and return home alive. That’s why Congress overwhelmingly passed a law in 1993 incorporating as policy the Uniform Code of Military Justice’s ban on homosexual sodomy. But now the federal government has overturned “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” We believe this is profoundly immoral on several levels. It would:

• Hurt unit cohesion, morale, retention, and recruitment;

• Violate the rights of those serving by forcing them to cohabit and shower with people who may desire them sexually;

• Jeopardize the military’s health and blood supply, since homosexual men are far more likely to be promiscuous and to have STDs, including HIV/AIDS;

• Force chaplains to resign or to jettison God’s Law in favor of political correctness;

• Subject all personnel to Maoist-style “re-education” in “diversity.”